This is where the pseudonyms gather to show off their wares. Come frustrated hack and unpublished journos, share your work with those less and more fortunate than yourselves.
email entries to pseudscorner@hotmail.co.uk for consideration

Monday, May 28, 2007

Not a Boxing Classic - file

Henry Cooper vs. Cassius Clay, Wembley Stadium 18th June 1963This programme is signed ‘Cassius Clay The Greatest of All Time’ and dated the day of the fight 6-18-63.

A classic sporting moment, especially if you are English, but is it still possible for sports writers to take on the old classics?

It’s a great year to write about, but how to gloss over John F. Kennedy’s promise of a Civil Rights Bill or his trip to Dallas or Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ and ‘I Have a Dream’ speech? How to touch lightly the unraveling events in Vietnam or the impact they would have on the young Clay?

A year when Spurs were the first English team to win a European trophy, Everton won the league and Man U raised the FA Cup, of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Chuck McKinley at Wimbledon.

‘Oh! What a Lovely War’ and ‘Oliver’ first opened in London and Please, Please Me first hit the decks. In America ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ came out as did ‘Surfin’ USA’ and the charts heaved with the likes of Ring of Fire, Da Doo Ron Ron, Wipe Out by the Safaris, Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa and It’s my Party.

The year that saw the arrival of Jose Mourinho and Graham Norton, Graham Poll and Gary Kasparov and the departure of Jean Cocteau, Georges Braques, Edith Piaf, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis as well as, of course, JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald.

It’s a great fight to write about; Clay, at 21, was coming in undefeated on his way to the Heavyweight Championship title and Cooper was thought to be a tough enough 29 year old pro that wasn’t too tough to stand in his way. The British public was electrified by the occasion and live boxing on TV was already big business in the US.

Cassius Clay had arrived in England amid the usual brouhaha and taunted lyrically to anyone who would listen, predicting Coopers end in the fifth round.

Wembley was packed to the rafters on the night with as many as 50,000 fans baying ‘En-ery, En-ery’ but Clay came out with a fanfare and a cardboard crown, ‘I’m the Greatest’ on his back.

Clay was determined to dance, Cooper to get him against the ropes. There was a few hairy moments in the first few rounds and the youngster was bleeding from his nose but seemed to be biding his time and playing with our ‘Enry who was starting to gush from a cut above his left eye.Cooper lands his famous left hook ‘Enery’s ‘Ammer’ (which ‘traveled 15 times faster than a Saturn V rocket with a force on landing of nearly 3 tons’) right at the end of Round 4 and Clay is dumped on the canvas for only the second time in his career.

The crowd is going mental and the Louisville Lip is clearly out on his feet as he gets helped back to his stool, where illegal smelling salts may have been administered by the fast thinking Angelo Dundee. A split in Clay’s glove is found and enhanced and who really knows how long the break lasted between those pivotal rounds.

Clay comes back out refreshed, destroys Cooper’s eye and gets the questionable honour of a Sonny Liston title fight as his reward. The rest, as they say, is history.

Great people to write about too; almost any history of Mohammed Ali makes good copy as the source is so extraordinarily great and Sir Henry Cooper also makes it into the history books not least as a lovable Cockney icon. What of the life and times of Angelo Dundee or perhaps even Jim Wicks, Cooper’s manager?

For every sports classic there is the accompanying opportunity for a sports journalism classic to rise to the occasion. This story is mostly covered by writers from a few basic angles; the blip in the rise and rise of Ali, the chance that England’s Cooper might have had and the controversy over the ripped glove and the debatably extended break between rounds.

I wanted to know if there was a still pointy angle to be found on this worn Rubik’s Cube of a story and so I read as much as I could about it, looked through the film and photographs of the fight and the times and tried to put myself into the Wembley crowd that night.

In the end I chose to focus on the cracks and not on the slabs, in between rounds from the perspective of Jim Wicks. There was a poetry workshop in the Guardian which seemed to show me a way to do this. By projecting Wicks’ words to Cooper in the corner, at this hugely pivotal moment between the 4th and 5th round, and recording it as a dramatic monologue.

I thought that perhaps by going the Blake route of finding ‘Eternity in an hour’ in a minute, I could capture a meeting point of strands of fate against a cultural and historical backdrop. Coopers peak, Ali’s fortune and determination to overcome Coopers left hook no matter the damage being done to his brain, Dundee’s defence of his boxer and Wicks’ hope for his.

O’ ‘Ee ‘ya ‘enry, are you ready?Don’t let ‘im dance, get ‘im up against the ropesKeep yer left working boy and keep ‘im awf ‘is toesGoo on ‘enry san, you keep it up you’ve got this wan

Goo on ‘enry san, you keep it up you’ve got this wan…”

So, not about the boxing classic but an attempt to say something fresh on a hacked out sports writing classic. I challenge any of you, who choose to challenge yourselves, to take a ‘Classic’ moment of sport and find something new to say about it, or a new way to say it, or a fresh angle.

In competition not with file, but with the greats of sports journalism and the great history of the events themselves. The bar isn’t very high at all (see above) and the process may well be hugely rewarding for the writer and certainly for the readers.

11 comments:

File,you got me. I couldn't even participate in an english spelling bee contest in rangoon, please excuse me if I pass on your suggestion.But your very creative and humorous piece met the challenge.It is a very imaginative way to describe the event.Too bad I am missing some of the dramaticdialogue however I'll stick to the analysis of this memorable fight.Let me lay a bit of history on you:"the rope a dope" was a strategy invented by Ali -ex Cassius Clay-that allowed his opponent to pound on him until he get tired.Then he will come out off the ropes and score shocking knock out.History tell us that being knocked down for good might have been the best thing that ever could happen to him. By following this pattern too may times ,he took too many punches and never recovered.Henry Cooper's knock out in the fifth was typical of Ali grandiose schemes knock out--The art of absorbing punishment and knock down-

The excellent piece on Kirkland Laing was written by the blogger known as octavemouret. I have invited him over here a couple of times, but he keeps playing hard to get, unlike that verse-churning bitch, file, who was all too easy.

Sorry, bunny, I just felt like calling you a bitch for putting up something beautiful like this and issuing a challenge on creativity on the day I chose to send a classical, dry, journalistic report. You sure know how to make me feel good, you slut.

Anyway, I'm up for a discussion on creative processes, but it's all a bit murky to me. The place where my ideas and urges originate is a complete mistery even to myself. I suppose the reason I enjoy reading the pieces on offer at Pseuds' Corner so much, is because the writers are not shackled in any way (but their own). Not writing to a deadline, not having the pressure to please or conform to the wishes of an editorial committee, not depending on it for a living (Ebren, show me the money!), an environment that is supportive and non-competitive but with a healthy level of emulation, all this contributes to good writing that feels fresh because it is definitely different from what you can read elsewhere.

I hope we can keep this going, and keep trying, not to outdo each other, but to get better and, yes, to push whatever boundaries we come up against, each in our own individual way.

offside, call me Ishmeal! or bitch, whatever as long as I can call you my petit cournichon, ok?

I really wish I'd never brought up the concept of competition or challenges tho. Your season end review would grace the pages of any international newspaper or zine, I don't really understand why it isn't and imo you write like the love child of Hemingway and Hunter S. in a Dior loincloth

re process; as you say, but isn't it because we are still shackled in our own ways, as well as others, that an opportunity to test our own bonds is even more important?

when I got to this classic fight article I immediately wanted to swoop down on that Wembley of light, that June night, as an omniscient if sooty pigeon ...

but these are my bonds and while I wrote a few of the numbers down I still ended up with some dodgy verse

Malevich's White on White would not have been possible without Giotto's perspective, we can only break the boundaries that are set

but perhaps one of the differences of writing sports pieces to creative pieces is that the mystery of origin is resolved and perhaps the best sports writing, like the best lies, comes from the mix of reportage and inspiration

it's allright, as long as you learn to spell cornichon. And I've told you before, flattery will get you nowhere, bunny. As for the rest, it's getting late and I can't think straight, so over and out. For now.